regency

I didn’t finish the dress I meant to have up today (the contest winner), so for now, I will present the recoloring chosen by one of the two winners of my Oscar contest, dannyscotland! Technically, it was chosen by her 5-year old daughter, and it did turn out to be vibrant. She wrote:

I have consulted with my ‘assistant’ a.k.a. daughter, and she would like to have you color the Valentine’s Day Regency Gown. For five years old, she’s pretty specific, so please feel free to alter as you see fit. :-) And thanks for understanding. She (and I, I guess) would love to see turquoise gloves and bottom ruffle, a pink shawl, lavender dress (the body of the dress), red roses, and pink draping over the bottom ruffle, kind of like it is now. Maybe it could be a different shade of pink?

Dannyscotland, I hope you and your daughter like it! It was fun for me, because the finished dress is quite different from the original, but it does some fun things in and of itself. The blue of the ruffle actually complements the forget-me-nots, and with the lavender background, you can see that there is a very subtle swirl pattern on the fabric, which was pretty hard to see on the earlier version.

But wait – that’s not all there is today! RLC of Paper Thin Personas has been doing interviews with paper doll bloggers lately, and for this month, she interviewed me! Check out the interview for my thoughts on why I love paper dolls, how I created the pose for the new doll series and whether I prefer sparkly things with some shine or shiny things with some sparkle. Plus, I did a blue princess gown exclusively for RLC’s site! If you’d like to see and download the full dress, you’ll have to check out the interview.

Come back next week for the 1912 gown with colors and patterns chosen by my husband! (I’ll give you a hint: Beetles.) I’ll do the poll next week, too. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for site updates, paperdoll thoughts and very pretty opals. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.

The main part of the dress I’d like an English Ivy pattern, with vines looking like they are growing up from the bottom of the skirt. I’d like the background of the dress to be a vibrant shade of green like lush grass in summer and the piping and lace to be an earth tone pink.

You know how if you put fabric or paper out in the sun it fades, and you can create patterns but placing objects on it? And then the background is faded version of the pattern? Well if you were to reverse that process so that the main part of the fabric was covered (i.e not faded) and the pattern was faded that is how I imagine the ivy pattern on the dress to look like. similar to the pattern in the gold on this dress http://lianaspaperdolls.com/2010/06/23/colored-1700s-gown-in-gold-white-and-pink/ but more pronounced.

I kinda hope that makes sense, but if not I’m sorry and I did my best.

It made sense, but I don’t know if I quite captured your vision, Ana, so I hope you like it!

I hate to disappoint people, especially my mom, but I won’t be drawing the royal wedding gown: the biggest reason is that I avoid drawing sheer fabrics because the dolls have different skin colors. It’s been suggested that I do two versions, but when the create-a-doll page is up — which I have been working on, albeit off and on — there will be around seven skin colors, so I’m not going to spend that much time on a dress that would be limited to the two dolls that are currently available.

Beyond that, I didn’t really pay attention to the wedding preparations or ceremony, I admired a dozen pictures of the dress and assorted hats, and now it’s out of my mind, which is essentially where it should be. Although I do draw a lot of pretty princess gowns, my affection for them stems from my deep love for fancy dresses and fairy tales; it has nothing to do with real royalty, which just strikes me as sad, stifling and generally illogical. If not for the lace part there’s a good chance I would have drawn the wedding gown, as it’s an iconic dress and a beautiful one, but I don’t care enough to spend the time on a substitute just for the sake of commemorating the fact that the House of Windsor is propagating itself. (I may yet make an exception for Princess Beatrice’s hat.)

If you all are so keen on royalty, I’ll put some time into a series of posts about the Japanese imperial family weddings I’ve been batting around in my mind for a while; my opinion of the Japanese institution isn’t particularly different from my opinion of the English one (if anything it is more critical), but the clothes and history interest me more. And maybe another paperdoll blogger will pick up my slack and draw the dress? Send me a link if you do, I’ll post it here.

Let’s do another contest… Here’s a good one. I’m in this picture. Which one of these kids is me?
Winner gets to choose a black and white drawing for me to color as they direct, as usual!Update: Shannon guessed it! I’m the girl with short hair at the top right, underneath the outstretched arm of the boy on the chair.

I’m sorry for the long absence! I hadn’t even realized it had been that long… I had a couple of days where nothing worked out, and then I got out of the habit, and here it is the middle of April and there are worried comments showing up in my e-mail. I didn’t want to make you wait until Tuesday for something new, so here is a dress for today. It’s been a while since I’ve drawn a regency dress just for the sheer joy of drawing a regency dress… but they do work up quickly, which is just what one needs when one has a paperdoll-related crisis of conscience somewhere around 9:30 P.M.
Hopefully this is enough to get me into the drawing habit again and I will have something new for you on Tuesday!

Sorry about the confusion over the last contest! See, we were out of town for the weekend; I don’t like to announce that sort of thing to the whole Internet, so I didn’t say it, but I wanted to keep to my schedule so I set up Saturday’s post to go automatically. Right up until we left, I was sneaking looks at my computer, thinking “Surely someone will guess in the next ten minutes?” On Saturday, I saw my mom, and she informed me that Ana had guessed correctly, so she posted a comment saying that Ana had won — and she should know, because she was there. Then, to Mom’s surprise, people kept guessing anyways! I think she might have even taken it a little personally…

In any case, my birthday was the 3rd, and I had a wonderful birthday, complete with chasing down the FedEx guy for one of my presents, a mix CD from one of my best friends that I listened to while coloring tonight and a perfectly clear night on Puget Sound so Brian and I could stand out on the edge of the low tide and stargaze. (Oh, and my dad freaking out about the aging process, the day wouldn’t be complete without it: I suspect my 30th birthday next year will be a little hard on him.)

Anyways, Ana won the contest, and here’s what she wrote:

ok then cool. first off happy belated birthday and secondly I’d like the first black and white regency gown from may (http://bit.ly/g6yMRy) coloured, please. I’d like dress to be a deep forest green with the accents and trim in gold and deep red (preferably without looking too christmasy in the process).

Without looking too Christmasy? Oh, I think I failed that one right off the bat… Would that Ana had won in summer when the associations wouldn’t be so strong! But oh well, I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and Ana, I hope you like at least one of these versions!

This dress is actually a little difficult – it’s too fussy, and you see the overskirt is actually intended to be lacy or semi-transparent: with the rest of the dress forest green, I thought a forest green overskirt would simply look too heavy, so I originally wanted a semi-transparent gold overskirt. However, I failed to make it look anything like how I wanted, and I gave up and made it white with just a little bit of gold, despite how carefully I try to stick to the contest winner orders. Still, I couldn’t help messing with it in Photoshop, which produced the version with the darker, gold-embroidered overskirt, and I found a place in my heart for both versions. I think the darker one makes the dress look a little more exotic and the whiter one just can’t help but give off that Christmas vibe. Which one do you like better? Take the poll…